


colors you know I can't see

by readingnotes



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: ??? that's actually ten/rose, Angst, Domestic Fluff, Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Romance, Ten/Rose is the hill I die on, TenToo - Freeform, basically something i thought of because i love Tentoo, i also thought of i knew you tried to change the ending/peter losing wendy, tried to make this aesthetically pleasing, you taught me colors you know i can't see with anyone else
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:53:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26676232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readingnotes/pseuds/readingnotes
Summary: falling, changing, the Doctor, and Rose.--There is a beach on Plaxis Five, where the sand is blue grain and the sea is blood-red. He tells her that because of some genetic difference in the way the planet’s plants survive, all of the leaves on Plaxis Five are naturally red.“And what happens in the fall?” Rose asks. “Don’t they change color and all?”The Doctor grins. “Oh, that’s the brilliant part! They never do,” he says, and continues on in the way that only he does. “Imagine that! Never changing, never falling.”She drinks in every word and listens to none of it.
Relationships: Bad Wolf/Rose Tyler, Metacrisis Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler, Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler, Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler | Bad Wolf
Comments: 5
Kudos: 25





	colors you know I can't see

**Author's Note:**

  * For [produwuce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/produwuce/gifts).



> Doctor Who destroyed me completely. I've rewatched RTD era so many times, no regrets. I finally make a contribution to the fandom here HAHAH. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> Title from Taylor Swift, illicit affairs.

**1\. red//attention**

There is a beach on Plaxis Five, where the sand is blue grain and the sea is blood-red. He tells her that because of some genetic difference in the way the planet’s plants survive, all of the leaves on Plaxis Five are naturally red.

“And what happens in the fall?” Rose asks. “Don’t they change color and all?”

The Doctor grins. “Oh, that’s the brilliant part! They never do,” he says, and continues on in the way that only he does. “Imagine that! Never changing, never falling.”

She drinks in every word and listens to none of it.

  
  


**2\. orange//warmth**

It takes Neso 26.67 Earth years to orbit around Neptune. For the Doctor and Rose, waiting only means a ride in the TARDIS and the few hours the festival lasts before another Neso year begins.

Orange and brown banners wave from the high-rise buildings. Sellers shout from the fruit stalls and vegetable carts in the market. Harvest is here, and children who are older than her run past the Doctor and Rose to see the sun.

“Twenty-something years for their one.” They stand behind the crowd of children, eating something that tastes like pumpkin pie. “They must live so long.”

“Oh, yes. They’ll live to be older than even me. The oldest person I met on this planet, the last time I was here, he’s still alive. That was four hundred years ago.”

She giggles to hide the twinge of jealousy racing down her spine. With him, no one is the first.

“There, do you see? That man, the one with the children. He’s five hundred forty-three.”

“You’re having me on!”

“No, really!” He laughs heartily and her heart overflows. Rose has to stop herself from putting her hand on his cheek, smoothing the spikes in his hair.

They lapse into silence as the sun rises.

“They’ve lived so much more,” she corrects herself, and turns to him, flooded with some emotion deeper than jealousy and just short of worship. “I know _you_ have. And you will.”

When he meets her eyes, she’s caught between stepping back and drawing closer. It is a heated, stolen glance, and she feels the weight of it; his stare is as blinding and vital as the sun. Rose feels empty when he turns away.

“Rose Tyler,” the Doctor says, “so have you.”

  
  


**3\. yellow//joy**

He buys Rose flowers at a marketplace on Neseli. “Looks just like you!” he declares, and offers the vendor too much money. She would tell him, but Rose can’t seem to figure out how a bouquet could look just like her.

They’re all soft pinks and yellows, and the petals fold inward, almost like tulips, except these are much larger and brighter. They look like they could have been from home, tucked into the back of the schoolyard, away from those estate boys who would’ve mucked them up. Mickey, for example.

The moment she cradles the stalks in her hands, the Doctor sees something else across the market. With a shout, he pulls her forward, and she laughs at his antics. “What d’ya mean, looks just like me?”

“Well,” he picks up a spare gear from a forty-seventh century cruise ship, “it’s you. How could I even begin to describe you?”

Rose doesn’t fully understand what he means. Or maybe she can’t comprehend the way his voice jumps an octave, the way he grips the spare gear a little tighter when he nearly drops it.

It hardly matters. There’s an explosion at the other end of the market. They look at each other, and another type of fun begins.

He takes her hand in his, and they run.

**3.5 gold//wisdom**

The explosion marks the beginning of a revolution. Thousands of slaves are shipped across the stars of this galaxy, and they’ve decided enough is enough.

But the Doctor pulls her by the waist when she reaches for a weapon. “Rose, we have to leave now.”

“Now?” The rest of her new friends are grabbing blasters and lighting torches. “I’m not going anywhere!”

His eyes are dark and his eyebrows brood over them. She spies a hint of gold in his features, but she can’t quite explain it.

“In the forty-eighth century, slaves from Neseli led a successful revolution that turned their planet upside down. So upside down, in fact, that their revolution inspired the rest of the galaxy's slaves to revolt. All slavery was outlawed in this galaxy within ten years.”

“But we’re in—”

“—the forty-seventh century, yes.”

“So—”

“So this isn’t it. This revolt is a fixed point: this is the revolt the leaders of the revolution will remember as they break through the system of inequality and injustice.” The Doctor pulls her back to the TARDIS, back home. Her feet follow his gravity.

“This revolt, the _deaths_ of these people, will inspire them all.” He stares at her, begging her to understand. They pass by the marketplace with the soft, bright pink-and-yellow flowers. The vendor waves at them and she wonders if he will survive the night.

“They’re all going to die, Rose, and I’m sorry, but there is nothing we can do about it.”

...

That night, she dreams of gold tears and a kiss that takes the gold away, and wonders if she will ever understand the way he sees the world: golden streams and puppeteer strings, knowing which cannot be pulled and which are his to change.

  
  


**4\. green//healing**

They captain a sandpaper-sail boat in seventeenth century Vietnam. Rose cuts her hands on their net as she hoists up a catch of turquoise fish. The Doctor teaches her how to debone fish with setting forty-seven of the sonic. They roast their spoils on the shore as the sun sets.

The next day, they do it again. The day after, they explore every nook and cranny of the moss-covered karsts that stand in the dark green sea. He licks the limestone to measure how old each structure is.

The day after the day after, he’s chasing her around their boat, then she’s chasing him, and he pushes her into Halong Bay.

The Doctor jumps in right after her.

That’s when they discover there’s an alien whale who’s lived in the bay for the past thousand years.

“We can take you home!” the Doctor offers.

There are a series of whale noises that the Balloon — the Baloof — the —

“The Baloomfadorph,” he yells back at her, “says that he can’t go back home. His planet’s — his kind is extinct, is what he said. Hunters and then tourism and then — nothing.”

She doesn’t quite know what to say to that.

“We can take you to another planet, somewhere that’s just like yours! We can help you!”

“Doctor,” Rose tries, drying her hair as he leans from the edge of their ship. His hair drips, his lips must taste salty, and his coat ( _Janis Joplin’s!!!_ ) is ruined for the time being, at least until they get back to the TARDIS. Speaking of:

“How is the Baloomfadorph going to fit into the TARDIS?”

“Well of course he can fit, she’s bigger on the inside!”

“No, I mean through the door.”

“Ah.”

…

The Baloomfadorph most certainly does _not_ fit through the door of the TARDIS.

...

He runs away, after that. Shaxtia has two burning suns that set gently on the horizon. They swing their legs from a crag above the windy beach and watch. The sky bursts in a glistening orange that ripples across the water.

The Doctor is silent. She reaches over and takes his hand. _I’m here_ , she tries to remind him. _Don’t think about that_. But how could he not think about his own planet?

He squeezes her hand back and she leans her head into his shoulder. She wants to say they fit perfectly, but then he will say that there is a storm coming.

He stares straight into the suns’ dying glares. She wonders if that is something Time Lords can do.

  
  


******5\. blue//melancholy**

After Shaxtia, the Doctor retreats to his bedroom and tells her to get some rest. He looms in the library and avoids touching one large, dusty book in the center with a cover engraved in Gallifreyan. He rarely comes to the kitchen for tea.

Most times, the Doctor runs non-stop to the edges of the universe. Still, there are days when he is unreachable. These are the days when Rose remembers cold blue eyes and a Northern accent, and thinks of the always-red leaves of Plaxis Five.

Rose asks him to buy chips for her, and knows the Doctor never has a pound on him. Rose will gladly pay for him to see daylight, to be surrounded by life and people bustling around to the pier and to the Tube and to the Tower. Some days, she forgets how temporary the permanent things in her life are to him. 

So in the busiest street in London, Rose feeds the Doctor chips. She listens to him say nothing and yet everything as life mulls around them, too slow for the man who runs away, just right for the man who regrets what brought him into her life.

She, too, has ended the Time War. To save his life, she feels no regret at all, not even if that makes her answerable for genocide.

…

Rose learns just how temporary things are to him, pressing her ear to a white wall. She pretends to hear him on the other side.

She knows she’ll never hear his voice again.

…

But then she does, and it makes everything worse.

  
  


**5.5. indigo//devotion**

Gray tails and soft skin. The creatures fly, but it looks like they’re swimming. They saved a litter of these beautiful aliens by reversing the polarity of — well, something like that. The sun was about to crash into their planet because of some gravitational error that idiotic humans caused in the planet’s core. Selfish, the lot of them. Including Rose, she must admit.

The Doctor asks, “How long are you going to stay with me?”

Rose knows she will remember this moment for the rest of her much more temporary life than his Time Lord one (or thirteen).

Up above, there are indigo skies and golden beams, and in her dreams, there is a soft kiss from him, and yet not him. Is she a string he is allowed to change?

She lies through her teeth, and wants to believe they have more time. “Forever.”

  
**6\. violet//gentleness**

Purple bruises from different universes, scars and calluses on her hands, boots on her London’s roads, Rose finally comes home. The violet, ominous twilight above them seems to fade away, just from the lightness in her step.

She’ll always come back for him. The utter delight on his face is enough reward for her.

They run, and the universes between them shrink and wither away.

…

Huh. And he thought he couldn’t change more.

**5.5. indigo//mysterious**

There is a beach on Earth — _this_ Earth, he never bothered to check on _his_ Earth — where the sand is bloody disgusting and the sea rumbles heartlessly. It is nothing compared to the roar of her sobs. His TARDIS slips away from his fingertips, and so does time.

In its place, he takes her hand. He has nothing else to hold onto except this pink-and-yellow human who dons this indigo leather jacket as her armor.

She is different. So is he.

She is still Rose. He is still the Doctor.

Right?

He _is_.

She still walks away from him.

The Earth tilts, gravity shifts, and he’s left reeling on his own. She’s broken his hearts before, but this is a new one. A brand new Just The One.

He simply can’t afford the possibility of her rejection.

He’s survived nine hundred years without her. Suddenly, she’s all that matters to him. It’s terrifying, and the Doctor wants to run, but Donna tells him to stay. It’s strange: to be yourself, and yet not.

  
**5\. blue//faithfulness**

He’s stuck wearing this bloody blue suit until they reach London, which, by his measure, is another fourteen hours. Rose rents two rooms in a bed-and-breakfast about thirty miles out of Bergen — which was a very _long_ walk from that beach, mind you — and immediately deposits herself in her and Jackie’s room without a backward glance.

Jackie pats him on the back, surprisingly sympathetic. “Give it a bit, dear. Took me and Pete quite a bit until we were all right. And look, we’ve got Tony, now —”

“Right, yes, thank you for your input, I’ll be going now.”

…

Trinkets from Christmas markets line the windowsill. Peppermint and cinnamon candles flicker on the table. He can almost taste the particles in the air but — oh, that’s rubbish, the human in him makes his tongue less perceptive to certain tastes, and he can’t —

The door bangs open. Rose wrinkles her nose at the sight of him, which, granted, he hasn’t washed up since his birth, so he must smell of human sweat, saltwater, sand, and smoke; but then again, if he had some new _clothes_ , that would solve that problem.

“You left me.”

“Not me.”

“ _You_ ,” Rose’s nostrils flare dangerously. “Either you say you’re him, or not him. Or you. Or — you still left me!”

“I spared you a lifetime of pain and gave you this instead!”

“Who said I wanted this?”

“You made your choice quite clear on that bloody beach.”

“You made _your_ choice. You spared yourself a lifetime of pain I would have gladly given.”

“ _I_ didn’t make my choice. Not exactly.” His own sanctimonious self ripped away the only scrap of Gallifrey he will ever have. That wasn’t a choice; although, in some ways, it is.

Her shoulders fall and her fists shake into open palms, and — there she is, his Rose, and her wellspring of compassion gives him faith. She is, after all, the one thing he believes in. “Well, I’m sorry you’re stuck here too.”

The Doctor wants to touch her cheek, to feel her lips against his again, to tell her that he remembers when she held his hand and fed him chips whenever he remembered he was an atrocious, terrible man. Full of blood and anger and revenge, he’d said.

Fully Time Lord him would have apologized profusely and struggled to find a nonexistent solution. Donna would have spit it all out and prattled on about how, from the very start of his life as a biological metacrisis, all he knows is how to run to her on a Dalek-infested battlefield.

But he’s a new man, of sorts. He settles on this: “Stuck with you? That’s not so bad.”

**4\. green//renewal**

Merely twenty-four hours after his arrival in this universe, Pete’s zeppelin crashes into Loch Ness. The Doctor curses colorfully in Gallifreyan. Rose looks at him strangely, and, over the sound of her sloshing boots, Jackie yells, “Is that alien for something?”

Of course. The TARDIS translation circuits aren’t working because she’s not here.

Rose’s hand brushes against his shoulder, but he walks away. He says nothing, not even when Pete calls for a car to be sent from the nearest Torchwood building in Aberdeen, of all places. Rose stops trying to talk to him halfway through their flight via the brand new zeppelin. His crisp blue suit is ruined by splotches of green muck from the swamps. Dirt, sweat, and lake water stick to his skin as the suit dries on the journey to London.

…

In all fairness, he should have seen this coming. There is no universe that grants him any rest.

But it does give him this: Rose’s burst of laughter when they exit the zeppelin only to meet the leaders of the Sycorax face-to-face, his own responding chortles of mirth, Jackie’s complete and utter disdain for their behavior, and Pete’s clueless, panicked expression.

“Silence!” the leader yells, though to the rest of them, it sounds more like “Jalaav!”

Rose inhales deeply to stop her giggles. A hard feat. “Soo gan praktil venis,” the leader tells Rose, who is very funny, but is very much not a slave.

“Jalvaan, Fadros Pallujikaa,” Rose replies, “got jak chiff.”

…

Rose negotiates with the Sycorax — even though she just threatened to kill them if they didn’t surrender — in record time. Apparently, they’re so impressed that she knows their language well, that, without a duel, without a death, Rose Tyler manages to make friends with a warrior race and invites them for tea, same time next year.

As the ship leaves the Earth’s atmosphere, Rose beams with pride. “There was another universe where humans enslaved the Sycorax instead of the other way ‘round. I helped one of them escape and she taught me how to speak.”

Her smile is as infectious as ever, her joy as renewing as her compassion. “Rose Tyler,” the Doctor says, “Defender of Universes.”

…

He wonders what he would have done if not for Rose. If Time Lord him had abandoned himself here and whisked Rose away like she wanted.

The Sycorax would be dead.

**3\. yellow//hope**

It starts with small missions here and there. The identification of an alien artifact. The modification of an alien weapon, which he modifies to uselessness. The “interview”, interrogation if you asked him, of an alien invader; granted, sometimes said alien is actually invading, but with a mindset like that, who wouldn’t invade the Earth?

Suddenly, Pete has made him a Consulting Torchwood Agent. Rose is always lurking in the laboratory, watching him present his findings to Pete and discreetly work on a new sonic screwdriver, listening to him ramble on about dimensions and particles. Keeping an eye on him, in case he takes the weapons and decides to do something motivated by blood and anger and revenge. She never says a word to him.

It’s dull and terribly difficult, although the work itself is simple. He’d rather travel the world alone, if he had to, which he mentions to Pete in one of his ongoing lectures of not using alien weapons for Torchwood purposes.

He’s stepping out of his flat — because he lives in a flat, now — when Pete assigns him to a new case. “It could be dangerous,” he warns, “and you’re going with Rose.”

…

Of course the Zygons of Pete’s World fly. Oh, and instead of bright red, they’re neon yellow here.

…

At least the Zygons didn’t kill them. They’ve taken Pete hostage, and unfortunately, he and Rose are trapped together inside the deadlocked storage room of Pete’s fishing lodge in Cardiff.

She suggests that he uses his sonic, to which he not-too-bitterly replies that he doesn’t have one, and that he would use the one he’s been constructing, except that: a) it’s not finished yet, and b) it’s not in the least bit capable of handling wood. Rose merely scowls in response and gestures around the storage room.

“Can’t you find something here to finish the sonic? We’ve got everything from Cyberman to Dimension Cannon parts.”

“Rose, we can’t bloody well use — oh. OH! Brilliant! Rose Tyler, you are brilliant!”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yes!”

…

From stripped parts of the Dimension Cannon — specifically, some regulators and stabilizers that he’s tweaked so that his sonic can do _wood_ now; isn’t that exciting, Rose, it’s never done that before! — the sonic now glows a bright yellow colour that is unsettling to both of them.

Anyway, the sonic will unlock whatever door is locked. They can rescue Pete, form some kind of treaty with the Zygons, and save the day, yadda yadda yadda, typical Doctor-and-Rose adventures.

They wait in the shadows in the hallway of Torchwood headquarters. Any minute now, the Zygons will leave Pete alone and fly off to do Zygon things. He imagines that entails taking over Torchwood, but that will be Problem #1 in just a few minutes.

“This is good, isn’t it?” Rose’s fists are curled and she grins easily. There is fire in her eyes and pink in her cheeks, and his fingers itch to cup her cheek and pull her closer. They haven’t touched since the beach. She calls this good as if the beach is the last time they’ll ever touch.

“Rose?”

“Pete told me you want to leave. Go travel.”

“Yeah.” The Zygons are taking an awful lot of time.

“On your own?”

“Well.” The Doctor scratches his neck, sideburns, then chin. “I just thought that no one would want to come with me.”

“No, it’s not — I just thought,” she bites her lip, “well, I understand that you might not want to be here anymore. Because everything’s changed and I’ve changed and you’ve been forced to live in Pete’s world, too.”

Oh. “I thought you might not want me to stay because I’m… I’ve changed. More than before.”

“Doctor,” Rose Tyler says, and it is ringing and wonderful and beautiful and a heavenly choir in his ears, “I’d love for you to stay.”

The sound of marching Zygons inches toward them. The Doctor’s rudimentary, oh-it’s-yellow-now sonic begins to whistle. Their grins grow wider and madder. She takes his hand, and whispers, “Run!”

...

Torchwood makes peace with the Zygons, whose home planet suffers from overpopulation and a dwindling supply of resources. They can stay on Earth, granted that they follow certain rules. Pete makes the Doctor and Rose in charge of the relocation and protection of Zygons.

The Doctor gives them a chance.

  
  


**3.5 gold//enlightenment**

“Do you think I knew? Not me, but…” Her other name, the name that saved them so many times, goes unspoken.

The Doctor licks his lips and hums in response. He simply doesn’t know. Perhaps, in another lifetime, another universe, he could have known the fixed points and the moments of flux intimately. He could have timed the stutter of his heartbeat when he looks at Rose. “Would you have changed anything?”

The comfortable silence slows the ticking seconds of his life. Somehow, he cherishes it, along with her smile. “No. I wouldn’t change any of it.”

…

Rose once saw the world as he did, all strings and buttons and webs of lives and destinies. For a few moments, she felt it in her hands, slipping her fingers through golden streams, the power and beauty and awe of time itself. She saw everything and snapped his string in half to tie it to hers.

One day, his string will end, and that is another adventure altogether. But will it end entangled with hers, as it began?

**2\. orange//youthful**

There is a beach in Barcelona, the city, not the planet, where Rose buries him in sand and the Doctor drags her into the crest of a wave. Underneath an obnoxiously orange umbrella, Jackie and Tony play with sand (re: Tony plays with sand, Jackie fusses over him and begs him not to bring dirt into the hotel later).

They compete to see who can swim the farthest, who can hold their breath longer underwater, who can dive the deepest — all of which they’ve done before, but Rose wanted to see if that changed because of the whole biological metacrisis thing.

The sunset approaches, and they lie on their backs, exhausted and sticky with sand and seawater and salt. He doesn’t remember the last time they’d laughed so hard doing anything. Certainly not for a while after the whole we-saved-the-universe-but-you-committed-genocide-to-do-it phase. Again.

Rose runs her fingers through his hair, mixing sand in its spikes again. He kicks a bit of the ocean onto her knees and she squeals.

“Doctor,” she says, serious, and they face each other, cheeks pressed in the sand, noses nearly touching. Rose rushes forward and kisses him until her lips meet his grin. She lays her head back down on the sand.

The Doctor stares at Rose like the suns on Shaxtia, remembering a past he can never return to, but knowing this is the everyday life he has always thought he wanted. He wonders if that is something a half-Time Lord, half-human can have.

**1\. red//love**

It is autumn, and he begrudgingly wears a long, colorful scarf Jackie knitted for him weeks ago. There are patches where he can tell she started off with socks, then mittens, before settling on, well, this.

In the backyard of the Tyler estate, the Doctor runs in circles with Tony on his shoulders until he begs to be put down. He throws them on a pile of raked leaves, and they giggle at Jackie’s shriek of horror.

“Rose! You get out here now, young lady, I swear—”

“Hey, Doctor,” Tony says in the confident tone of a five-year-old. “Why’re these leaves red?”

“Fantastic question, Tony! These leaves have more anthocyanins than chlorophyll inside their cells, which makes —”

“How come the tree’s makin’ new leaves?”

“Well,” the Doctor says, “that’s the brilliant part. They’re still the same leaves, just a bit changed, is all.”

Footsteps to the backyard. A plop next to the duo, leaves scatter, and Tony laughs hysterically in between them. Jackie complains as loudly as ever until Pete asks her to settle down. The Doctor only has eyes for Rose.

“Just a bit changed, is all.” He doesn’t need to say it. Rose Tyler says it all when she looks at him.

_FIN_.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta, Halg. Also CONGRATS ON FINISHING RTD ERA, produwuce <3!!!


End file.
